ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Acromegaly is a rare disorder, developed by overproduction of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-growth factor 1 (IGF-1), in most cases based on a pituitary adenoma. The increased IGF-1 and GH levels lead to the growth of acres and organs as well as metabolic changes. When manifesting before epiphyseal closure, a giant growth develops.Case Report: A Ukrainian girl presented at the age of 14 years with enlargem...

Background and Aims: Coats plus syndrome (MIM # 612199) is a highly pleiotropic disorder particularly affecting brain, eye, bone and gastrointestinal tract. We describe the phenotype of a patient with severe growth failure where whole exome sequencing (WES) revealed compound heterozygosity for two mutations in the CTC1 gene.Patient and Methods: The patient, the fourth child of healthy non-consanguineous parents, was born...

Background: The new preventive child health care guideline for referral of short/tall children facilitates early detection of growth disorders. Understanding the impact of early treatment initiation on recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) adherence and catch-up growth can support the use of the guideline.Aim: To evaluate the impact of age at rhGH treatment start on adherence (≥85% vs <85% of prescribed doses...

Introduction: Growth hormone (GH) treatment is essential for growth in children with GH deficiency. Also short children born small for gestational age (SGA), and children with syndromes like Turner Syndrome (TS), Noonan Syndrome (NS) and Silver Russel Syndrome (SRS) can benefit from GH treatment. For children with needle anxiety GH delivered by a jet device can be a solution for the daily subcutaneous treatment for many years. In 2021, a global recall of the o...

Background: Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is a common and preventable cause of mental retardation in children, and is detected using dried blood spots in many neonatal screening programs. Upon suspicion of CH, plasma free thyroxine (FT4) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) concentrations are measured. CH can be of thyroidal or central origin (CH-T and CH-C, respectively). While CH-T diagnosis is based on an elevated plasma TSH in combination with a low FT4,...

Background: Paediatric obesity is a multifactorial disease characterized by an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure. In rare cases, obesity is caused by underlying medical disorders arising from disruptions in the leptin-melanocortin pathway, which regulates satiety and energy expenditure.Aim: To investigate resting energy expenditure (REE) in relation to body composition in children and adolescents with sever...

Background: There are limited data on differences in height, bone mineral density (BMD) and pubertal delay between homozygous and heterozygous carriers of IGFALS defects.Objective and hypotheses: To describe clinical and laboratory features and BMD of homozygous and heterozygous carriers of a novel IGFALS mutation in a large Kurdish family.Method: Index cases were two first degree cousins presenting with short stature, low IGF1, ve...

Introduction: Children with hypothalamic dysfunction, e.g. due to a genetic or acquired cause such as suprasellar tumours, often suffer from hyperphagia and/or decreased resting energy expenditure (REE). This process induces uncontrollable weight gain, resulting in severe hypothalamic obesity (HO). No effective treatment is available yet for HO. Amphetamines are psychostimulants that are known for their appetite reducing and REE stimulating side effects. Here,...

Background: Previously we showed that pubertal children born small for gestational age (SGA) with a poor adult height (AH) expectation can benefit from treatment with GH 1 mg/m2 per day (~0.033 mg/kg per day) in combination with 2 years of GnRH analogue (GnRHa) and even more so with a double GH dose. GnRHa treatment is thought to have negative effects on body composition and blood pressure. Long-term effects and GH-dose effects on metabolic health in children treate...

Background: Patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) might suffer from hyperandrogenism. For diagnosing and treatment monitoring, usually levels of androstenedione (A4) and testosterone (T) are measured in blood. More recently, adrenal-specific 11-oxygenated androgens such as 11- hydroxyandrostenedione (11OHA4), 11-ketoandrostenedione (11KA4), 11-hydroxytestosterone (11OHT), and 11-ketotestosterone (11KT) were introduced as promising biomarkers, but ...